Picasso's War: The Year the Art World Came to America

Summary of Picasso's War

1. 1

   The Artistic Revolution That Transformed America

   

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   In a cramped Manhattan apartment in 1924, art collector John Quinn unveiled Henri Rousseau's "The Sleeping Gypsy" to four carefully selected guests. This painting-showing a serene woman slumbering as a lion approaches-represented Quinn's lifelong mission as a cultural renegade who had personally supported many artists defining modernism. Seriously ill with cancer at fifty-four, Quinn had no resolved plans for his extraordinary collection. This moment would become part of a larger story-how a handful of determined individuals fought to bring modern art, particularly Picasso's revolutionary work, to an initially hostile America. Their struggle would eventually transform the Museum of Modern Art from rented rooms without a single Picasso into a global cultural powerhouse where his revolutionary works now dominate the galleries. America in the early 1900s existed in profound contradiction. While boasting world power status with advanced technology, its culture remained deeply conservative. Wall Street lawyer John Quinn recognized this paradox acutely. Born to Irish immigrants in small-town Ohio, he had risen remarkably to become Harvard-educated with connections to presidents and leading intellectuals. Yet when confronted with Picasso's Cubist figures at Alfred Stieglitz's Little Galleries in 1911, he found them as perplexing as other New Yorkers who saw them as "Alaskan totem poles" or "emanations of a disordered mind." Quinn grew increasingly disillusioned with what he called "dead art"-the varnish-coated "brown gravy" paintings that wealthy Americans coveted for social status. He craved art with "radium"-work that possessed vitality and expressed contemporary life. In February 1913, he helped organize the International Exhibition of Modern Art (the Armory Show), which struck New York with explosive force. Despite Quinn's promotional efforts, critics were largely negative, with some suggesting the avant-garde works were socially deviant and politically dangerous. In Chicago, students from the Art Institute even staged a mock trial and burning of Matisse reproductions-the first organized act of violence against modern art in twentieth-century America.

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   The Dealers and the War: Reshaping Picasso's Legacy

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   Two young Paris art dealers developed contrasting approaches to promoting avant-garde artists. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a German from a banking family, opened a gallery in 1907 dedicated to new art. Despite initial repulsion to Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," he became Picasso's exclusive dealer. Paul Rosenberg created what critic Louis Vauxcelles called "an abode of modernist elegance" - a sophisticated townhouse displaying modern art in domestic settings. His approach proved provocative art could belong in bourgeois interiors when presented alongside elegant furniture. Though both dealers shared Jewish backgrounds and refined taste, Kahnweiler avoided Parisian society while Rosenberg embraced it. Kahnweiler displayed few paintings at once, while Rosenberg believed challenging art needed contextual presentation - a strategy that would later succeed in America. When France announced mobilization in 1914, French citizens Braque and Derain reported for military duty, while Picasso, a foreigner, focused on securing his residency and finances. Their collaborative creative period ended, though their friendships endured. Kahnweiler, vacationing in Bavaria when war broke out, fled to Switzerland, unable to return to Paris where he'd left over 700 paintings including significant works by Braque, Derain, Vlaminck, Gris, and Picasso. This collection represented the entire Cubist movement and much of Fauvism. The French government seized Kahnweiler's inventory under enemy property laws, removing this remarkable collection from circulation for nearly a decade. In America, John Quinn viewed collecting as preserving culture being destroyed in Europe. As war began, New York experienced a boom in modern art galleries. Yet behind this facade of a vibrant market, Quinn was often the only serious buyer at exhibitions, purchasing works others wouldn't touch.

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   Alfred Barr's Vision and the Struggle for Recognition

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   In January 1926, Alfred Barr visited "The Memorial Exhibition of Representative Works Selected from the John Quinn Collection" in New York. Though showing only a fraction of Quinn's holdings, the exhibition revealed his audacious collecting vision before the collection's dispersal after just three weeks. Quinn's estate faced significant challenges: poor cataloging, disinterested executors, and a bank uncomfortable with radical art - one officer remarked, "We don't want Wall Street laughing at us as the Cubist bank." For Barr, Quinn's exhibition represented a beginning. Inspired by Quinn's "astonishing prowess" for discovering new art, Barr wanted to tell the comprehensive story of French modern art absent from American museums. At twenty-three, this reserved, scholarly young man with boyish features seemed an unlikely revolutionary. From modest means as a Presbyterian minister's son and scholarship student, Barr recognized the cultural upheaval despite his "woefully superficial" knowledge of modern painting. Three months after Barr started, the Museum of Modern Art opened to tremendous public interest. Breaking tradition, MoMA occupied the twelfth floor of a commercial building rather than a neoclassical temple, featuring the innovative "white cube" gallery with neutral pale walls that would become standard throughout the art world. Despite critical acclaim and crowds, Barr recognized MoMA's precarious position. The works displayed were by established artists, not the challenging twentieth-century art he hoped to champion. More concerning, MoMA opened just ten days after the 1929 stock market crash. By mid-1932, Barr's health deteriorated under professional disappointments. Despite the museum's acclaim, his larger vision remained unrealized, and the museum couldn't afford its operations or the $1 million endowment needed to access Lillie Bliss's valuable bequest.

4. Chapter 4

   Guernica and the Transformation of American Art

   By winter 1936-37, Europe's first military confrontation with Fascism had darkened, with German bombers attacking Madrid. Despite alarming reports, Picasso remained emotionally detached until Juan Larrea brought news that German planes had destroyed Guernica, a historic Basque town. The attack, meticulously planned for market day, targeted civilians fleeing in the streets. This atrocity shattered Picasso's emotional defenses. Abandoning weekend plans, he began sketching furiously with unprecedented rage - what Dora Maar called "indignation" and Bergamin described as "Spanish fury." Having never created political art, Picasso produced an immense twenty-five by eleven foot canvas. Working rapidly in only gray-black-and-white, he created a dark tableau of suffering that synthesized his entire artistic vocabulary. While Guernica initially received little attention, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was making its way to New York. Alfred Barr considered it the first Cubist picture and "the arrogance of genius" made manifest. Despite its provocative brothel scene and $30,000 price tag, Barr secured it through creative financing. As Europe entered war in September 1939, Barr faced both an internal power struggle at MoMA and the challenge of securing artworks for his Picasso retrospective. Remarkably, he brought seventy European loans safely to New York without war insurance. The exhibition transformed American artists. Willem de Kooning called it "staggering," Louise Bourgeois experienced a "complete shut down" in her own work, and Jackson Pollock later threw his exhibition catalog across his studio, shouting "That guy missed nothing!" By war's end, Picasso had become a household name in America despite never visiting. Many Picassos that crossed the ocean in 1939 never returned to Europe, with the museum's collection growing to occupy about 20% of its wall space by the early 1950s. What began as a quixotic mission had transformed Picasso from a reviled foreign radical into America's most celebrated modern artist, while MoMA permanently changed how Americans experience visual culture.

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